Implantable medical devices (“IMD”) are used today for various applications to deliver electrical pulses from a pulse generator within the IMD, through an electrical lead connected to the IMD, to a targeted location within a patient's body. For instance, pacemakers are used to deliver electrical pulses generated within a pulse generator through an electrical lead to a patient's heart to maintain proper rhythm. In order to deliver those pulses, the electrical pulse from the generator is delivered through a lead connector assembly to a plurality of electrical contacts at one end of the lead, which lead then carries the electrical pulses to electrical contacts at the opposite end of the lead which are positioned adjacent the portion of the patient's heart that is to be stimulated.
Similarly, IMD's may be used in neurological applications, such as for deep-brain stimulation and spinal cord simulation, in which leads deliver electrical pulses generated in the IMD to targeted portions of a patient's brain or spinal cord.
In still other applications, leads may be used to sense particular conditions within a patient's body, and relay that sensed condition back to a processing unit within the IMD.
Many IMD's include a housing that houses the circuitry of the IMD, a connector block that connects the lead or leads to the IMD, and one or more leads inserted into the connector block to transfer electrical pulses generated within the IMD to the targeted portion of the patient's body. Many such connector blocks include female receptacles into which the male end of a multicontact lead may be inserted; however, the female receptacles are provided on only one end of the connector block. This configuration of the female receptacle of the header or connector may have a limiting effect on the number and types of leads that may be operated with a single implantable medical device. For instance, a connector block might have two receptacles, each providing 12 electrical contacts configured to receive a 12-contact lead. This configuration can be useful where the patient's condition requires the delivery of electrical stimulation using 12-contact leads, such as a 12-contact percutaneous electrode. If, however, the patient's condition changes such that an alternate configuration is desired (such as using 3 8-contact leads to more disparately apply the electrical pulses across a broader area), an alternative connector block must be provided that provides 3 8-contact receptacles. Requiring such a change of the IMD to receive an alternative lead configuration can be quite expensive and clearly uncomfortable and undesirable for the patient. Likewise, as doctors may have varied preferences for how and in what configuration electrical pulses should be delivered to a targeted portion of a patient's body (based on a particular patient's diagnosed condition), providing separate connector blocks for every possible configuration the doctor might come across can likewise become quite costly, as it significantly complicates the inventory that the doctor must maintain.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an improved connector block for an implantable medical device that could be variably configured to adapt to varied clinical conditions so as to allow the delivery of electrical pulses from an IMD in such varied clinical conditions using only a single, standard connector block.